Encoding Path in Motion Events: Boundary-Crossing as a Relevant Typological Criterion

Abstract

Summary. Talmy's (1975Talmy's ( , 1985Talmy's ( , 1991Talmy's ( , 2000 seminal work on motion events representation in languages that led to significant typological distinctions is primarily based on the differences in encoding (framing) of the Path, as one of the basic semantic components of such events, either in the V(erb stem) or in the S(atellite) -which accounts for the proposed typological language dichotomy V-framed (VLs) and S-framed languages (SLs). Although the above distinction is a very important one, having implications at the level of syntactic structure, crosslinguistic data indicate to some variations that further prompted researchers to question a clear-cut binary typological opposition. Thus, more thorough data from Romance languages (in addition to Spanish, French and Italian) led to re-considering their status as VLs and rather considering them belonging to the third class of "split" languages (Talmy). The aim of the paper is to analyze the place of Romanian in this typological classification, through making observation on the Path representation in motion events in contrasted narrative texts translated from English (a SL) into Romanian. The hypothesis is that Romanian might claim a mixed typological status, eventually belonging to the class of "split" languages based on the assumption that, first, it is not so poor in manner of motion verbs (MmV) as it is presumably the case of VLs (see the alternative labels sometimes attached to SLs vs. VLs, respectively -manner-rich vs. manner-poor languages) and, second, it does not exclude the possibility of using complex Path as satellite to a MmV, particularly boundary-crossing, which can serve as a test to determine the typological class of language (e.g., a țâșnit de după perdea (lit. rushed from behind the curtain) -'rushed out from behind the curtain'; a lunecat de pe acoperiș (lit. slipped from on the roof) -'slipped from the roof'. In this respect, the paper aims at focusing on the nature of the second preposition.